‘Feeling Sorry for Bob Ewell’
by Sirenic Griffin
Summary: His wife died. Leaving him with all the children. He is heart broken. Morning. It rains and he finds himself at the place he hated. The place his father frequented: the Pub. Bob Ewell.


**Summary: **His wife died. Leaving him with all the children. He is heart broken. Morning. It rains and he finds himself at the place he hated. The place his father frequented: the Pub. Bob Ewell

**Disclaimer: **I do not own To Kill a Mocking Bird. My name isn't Harper Lee.

**Other: **This was an assignment. Like most people's. The aim was to create a story in which the reader emphasised with a character that wasn't liked in the book. It was so that you could… well almost feel sorry for them. Read and tell me if I hit the right aim.

**_- 'Feeling Sorry for Bob Ewell' -  
by: Sirenic Griffin_**

"CRACK!" The thunder was loud… loud and overpowering almost as if it was going to pull the whole sky apart but it could easily be ignored. The rain that went with it wasn't so easy to ignore. I bolted, trying to remember how long I'd been there. Just staring listlessly… Mayella was long gone and would probably have made tea for the children already and reason slowly returned to my brain.

_Bob, your not going to able to get home in this downpour. It's dangerous. _

I looked down most the streets, looking around for an available place to wait out the rain but everybody had already closed their doors. The pub however was always open. I bolted to it, throwing myself in. Dripping coat and all.

Nobody noticed my 'dramatic entrance' so I took to sitting down at the front counter, the bar tender rushed towards me asking what I wanted. The reply was sullen: Nothing. He gave me a beer on the house.

I didn't want it. But he insisted that anyone who looked as bad as I did needed a drink, and sat it in front of me. Unmoving. Untouched.

"Bang!" The thunder growled this time, almost shaking the walls with such ferocity I hadn't seen since…

She'd been there for sixteen years.

A constant smile on her beautiful face.

_Do you know why your father came here? _

"Snap!" The sky rumbled again and it was an unusual sound for a sky to make but eighteen years ago it made the same sound… when I met her…

My boots were on, old, tired boots and my Macintosh was just as weather beaten there was only two problems. The first being that it was raining, one of the worst storms I could remember in Maycomb and the second was –

"George? Are you leaving? It's RAINING!" A croaking voice said from the Far East corner of the house.

"George's gone!" I yelled at her, my mother. I refused to turn around and look at her. It was too painful. She'd once been a vibrant woman, full of life and happiness before she got sick.

Dr Reynolds had said that a daily dose of some special sort of medicine would cure her but… but… we didn't have the money. My mother was different now anyway. She was rarely out of delirium, preferring a fantasy of rich living to reality, she was constantly calling for my brothers and sisters – all who'd left long ago, and her skin, last time I'd looked was a sickly gray. It hurt now… just to look at her.

"Bye Ma!" I called back to her. Pa was supposed to be back when I left but I couldn't wait for him any longer. We needed dinner. So I left, grabbing the gun.

We mostly shot ducks, wild ones and that'd be enough for a two meals between the three of us… but none were down at the stream so I walked to the valley area, another place the ducks frequented. I was getting close to the land boundary but I had another few fields before I crossed it.

I sat down to wait, gun cocked and ready. There was something brown moving out in the middle of one of the fields. I took careful aim but withdrew it when I realised it wasn't a duck. It was, unfortunately, a girl. She marched straight up to me. The storm had trickled down to a halt by now.

"Are you insane!" She screamed. Clothes sticking to her. I restrained from telling her she was. Going outside without proper clothes.

"I mistook you for a duck." I settled for simply but she wasn't content. Her eyes blazed.

"DUCK! It's not DUCK season. You must be a filthy Ewell to try and hunt ducks out of season." When she said _Ewell_ like that my back straightened. It wasn't like she said it like an ordinary word but with such hate it was like the insult meant I was a nigger.

"Filthy Ewell?" I restrained myself to just questioning.

"What are you? Maybe a do-gooder Finch?" She glowered.

"A Cunningham and your on our land." I raised my eyebrows, remembering that _some_ of the Cunningham Clan owned some of the boundary land.

"Cunningham? Your no better off than me." She choked.

"Well at least I have honour and pride." I glowered at her, storming off.

I arrived back at the house, wet, chilled to the bone, a man sprawled in a drunken stupor over one of the chairs. His boots were scuffed, dirt encrusted and smelt badly, as did the trousers he wore.

_Somebody didn't go out in the rain. _

His hands were rusty and his fingernails and back of his neck were dark grey; he was unshaved and the only difference between him and the _nigger _neighbours was that somewhere, under all that muck was a white man. All the townsfolk avoided him and I would've too had circumstances been different. They weren't. This man was my father.

"Bob? Where's the grub?" He growled, looking at me, scrutinizing everything.

"I dunno, you're the 'money earner'. You tell me?" It was something I was only brave enough to say when he was wiped out, when I couldn't catch something. He roared coming to his feet. He groaned, swaying, his eyes finally focusing on my face.

"You didn't catch nothin' did you?" He asked and I admitted a dejected no.

"Lazy SOD!" He growled. Falling on me, swinging wide. I hated when I was wrong.

"CRACK!" I jumped.

"Bob," the bartender said laughing. "Your meant to drink the drink." I glowered at him.

"I'll drink it for you." Link Deas sat beside me, a goofy smile plastered on his face. I glowered at him. I didn't like Link Deas.

"If the Pathetic Ewell doesn't want any." Pathetic, he'd called me that before. Just after I met her… Right now, I wasn't in my right frame of mind. I jumped him then.

"Pathetic?" I titled my head.

"You should stop tryin. No Ewell is _ever_ going to amount to anything. You should stop trying." I glared. Beer glass in hand. I sculled it. Ewell's have never been able to hold beer.

_That was pathetic. You should stop rising to him. Even she told you that remember?_

_She told you rising to Link Deas was pathetic. VIOLET CUNNINGHAM told you it was pathetic. She told you it was just proving him right. She told you the only way to prove him wrong was to become something. _

It didn't actually matter. I didn't care. I had loved her. I tried. I failed. It was hard to make something of yourself in these dark times. I only tried cause she wanted me to… now that she was gone… now that she was gone I couldn't see the point. But there was something for me at home.

"I've got to go." I said, stumbling to my feet. The drink was beginning to take effect. Intoxicating. Things were beginning to fade. To fog up.

"I've got to get home now." I said slowly. Making sure I said each word properly. If anybody knew I got drunk on one drink Maycomb County wouldn't look straight at me again.

"Violet's probally worried sick." I giggled it a bit, and the words came out slurred. I couldn't stop it and the fog around me grew.

"Violet's Dead." Link said slowly and I growled. The drinks effects had already taken hold. I was drunk. Angry and drunk.

_She died. _

_It's tearing you up._

"Don't cha dare say that about me wife!" I yelled, springing on him. Pounding. Grabbing his collar and pushing him down. Being able to use both hands equally meant that I had the meanest fists.

The others had to pull me off Link… but the damage was done. I'd pounded him. I was drunk after one beer. I would be lucky to ever be employed in Maycomb again.

**As you know Bob wasn't employed. He framed a person for being with Mayella, his reputation was mocked, he tried to kill Finch children while he was drunk. He spent every penny he had on drink. He was killed by Boo and I don't believe he was mourned. **

**Review.**

**Sirenic Griffin.**


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